IPhone 4S
The iPhone 4S, retroactively re-stylized the iPhone 4s, is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed, manufactured, and released by Apple Inc. It is the fifth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 4 and preceding the iPhone 5. Announced on October 4, 2011 at Apple's Cupertino campus, its media coverage was accompanied by the death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs on the following day. Available for pre-order on October 7 and coming to mainstream availability in retail stores on October 14 in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan, sales peaked over its predecessor with over a million sales in the first twenty-four hours of preorder availability and over four million sales in the first four days of retail availability. Further worldwide rollout, including 22 additional countries on October 28, came over the next several months. Retaining the external design of the iPhone 4, the 4S hosted revised hardware specifications, most notably an upgrade to the Apple A5 chipset, and an eight-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording. It debuted with iOS 5, the fifth major version of Apple's mobile operating system, that introduced features including iCloud, iMessage, Notification Center, Reminders, and Twitter integration. It also debuted a 4S-exclusive intelligent personal assistant named Siri that was later included in future generations of mobile Apple products. Reception was generally favorable. Reviewers noted Siri, the new camera, and processing speeds as significant advantages over the prior model. It was succeeded by the iPhone 5 as Apple's flagship phone on September 12, 2012, however the 4S continues in production albeit being sold at a lower price point. In Singapore, the iPhone 4S went on sale on October 29, 2011. Operator M1 provides also a non-camera version of 4s. According to the operator, both camera modules are completely removed, not just covered. The camera-free device has been certified by Singapore's Ministry of Defence (Mindef), which means they will be allowed in army installations in the island state. The iPhone 4S stopped production of non-camera model on September 2012. Angeline Wong, Annabel Lim, Ong Lifen, JingXuan Phoebe, Vivian Neo, Er Hui Jun had used the iPhone 4S together. Maryann Seto had used the iPhone 4S from 19 October 2011 to 23 October 2014, where her phone was replaced by iPhone 6 Plus. Mr Suhairi had used the iPhone 4S from 18 October 2011 to 25 May 2013, where it was sent to the redemption centre and was faulty. It was replaced by Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Ng Si Miang had however used the iPhone 4S from February 2012 to February 2015. History The iPhone 4S was unveiled at Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event on October 4, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino, California. The keynote was the first which Tim Cook gave since the Verizon keynote earlier in the year. It was also Cook's first launch without Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose health was deteriorating, and he died the day after the announcement of the iPhone 4S. Tim Carmody of Wired praised Cook for focusing on company achievements, calling him a "global business thinker" and a "taskmaster". On September 10, 2013, the iPhone 4S name was re-stylised as iPhone 4s, using a lower case 's' to reflect the names of the newly announced iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. This was unusual for Apple as an upper case 'S' had been used since the introduction of the iPhone 3GS in 2009. On September 9, 2014, the iPhone 4S was officially discontinued following the reveal of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. Daniel Mok and Koh Jin had spent from October 2011 to April 2014 using the iPhone 4S, where Jeremy Mok had spent for 3 years using the iPhone 4S, and Daisy Ang had spent until January 2016 using the iPhone 4S. Features The iPhone 4S runs iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. The user interface of iOS is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. The response to user input is immediate and provides a fluid interface. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command) or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching from portrait to landscape mode). The iPhone 4S was first shipped with iOS 5, which was released on October 12, 2011, 2 days before the release of the device. The 4S uses iOS 5.1.1, which was released on May 7, 2012. As of September 2015, the device can be updated to iOS 9. It can act as a hotspot, sharing its internet connection over WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB, and also accesses the App Store, a digital application distribution platform for iOS developed and maintained by Apple. The service allows users to browse and download applications from the iTunes Store that were developed with Xcode and the iOS SDK and were published through Apple. The iPhone 4S can play music, movies, television shows, ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts and can sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations. Options are always presented alphabetically, except in playlists, which retain their order from iTunes. The iPhone 4S uses a large font that allows users plenty of room to touch their selection. Users can rotate their device horizontally to landscape mode to access Cover Flow. Like on iTunes, this feature shows the different album covers in a scroll-through photo library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen. Alternatively, headset controls can be used to pause, play, skip, and repeat tracks. On the 4S, the volume can be changed with the included Apple Earphones, and the Voice Control feature can be used to identify a track, play songs in a playlist or by a specific artist, or create a Genius playlist. The iPhone 4S introduced a new automated voice control system called Siri, that allows the user to give the iPhone commands, which it can execute and respond to. For example, iPhone commands such as "What is the weather going to be like?" will generate a response such as "The weather is to be cloudy and rainy and drop to 54 degrees today." These commands can vary greatly and control almost every application of the phone. The commands given do not have to be specific and can be used with natural language. Siri can be accessed by holding down the home button for a short amount of time (compared to using the regular function). An impact of Siri, as shown by Apple video messages, is that it is much easier for people to use device functions while driving, exercising, or when they have their hands full. It also means people with trouble reading, seeing, or typing can access the phone more easily. On the iPhone 4S, texting can be aided by the voice assistant, which allows speech-to-text. In addition to regular texting, messaging on the iPhone 4S is supported by iMessage, a specialized instant messaging program and service that allows unlimited texting to other Apple iOS 5 products. This supports the inclusion of media in text messages, integration with the device's voice controlled software assistant, and read receipts for sent messages. Input to the computer comes from a keyboard displayed on the multi-touch screen or by voice-to text by speaking into the microphone. Entered text is supported by predictive and suggestion software as well as a spell-checker, that includes many regional dialects like Swiss spoken French. At announcement, plans were in place for the iPhone 4S to support many languages. Different features have different language requirements, such as keyboards compared to the word predictor and spell-checker, which needs a large dictionary of words. Language support is related to the iOS 5 operating system that the device launched with, although not always. The Siri digital assistant supported French, English, and German at launch. Since it uses a software based keyboard supported by the multi-touch display, it can support many different keyboard layouts without having to change physically. The iPhone 4S can display different languages and scripts at the same time. On September 19, 2012, iOS 6 was released to the iPhone 4S among other compatible device over the air device (OTA) package. According to Apple the update contains 200 new features and tweaks, which includes a new maps app, dubbed Apple Maps, Facebook integration and Passbook, an application that allows users to store their coupons, boarding passes and tickets digitally. On September 18, 2013, Apple released iOS 7 and the iPhone 4S is among other compatible iOS devices that also receive the update without any lagging issues compared to the iPhone 4. Although the device has improved performance over iOS 7, some newer features that were released to newer models such as AirDrop and CarPlay were not supported. The iPhone 4S can run iOS 8, which was released in 2014 and had been known to the use at Republic Polytechnic Open House 2018 for the first time. Given that the device was supported for long, some newer features such as Apple Pay were not supported. It is also unable to work with the Apple Watch due to the relatively aged hardware. In fact, some users even reported that the performance on the iPhone 4S is very slow, similar to how iOS 7 ran on the iPhone 4, and suggesting that they should not upgrade due to battery draining issues and hanging on the calls. Meanwhile, Apple had released the iOS 8.1.1 which brought slight improvements to the phone and the iPad 2, but still did not run as fast as newer models. On June 8, 2015 and during the JPAE, Apple had announced that the WWDC that the iPhone 4S can run iOS 9. This makes the first iPhone to support five major versions. iOS 9 also supports the iPad 2 as well, bringing the device as close to six versions. Although the iPhone 4S had begun the limitations in the iOS 8, iOS 9 is said to bring in performance enhancements that may help the ageing device run more smoothly again. On December 22, 2015, Apple faced a class action lawsuit for crippling the iPhone 4S with the iOS 9 with the slow and buggy software or to pay hundreds of dollars for the new iPhone.